Outstanding law firm for Client Service Excellence: Bun & Associates, Cambodia

Bun & Associates is currently the largest full-service business law firm in Cambodia. Our award-wining team is dedicated to providing excellent ethical legal services and business value to our clients and community. Commitment, professionalism and quality are weaved into everything that we do. 

The number of M&A deals handled by our Corporate team significantly increased. The type of deals is also quite diverse, ranging from financial services, telecommunication, hospitability business to pharmaceutical. With the steady growth of the property market, our Real Estate and Construction team is particularly busy in assisting clients in property development projects. The legal services that we provide includes legal and tax structure to implement property holding company, Real Estate Investment Trust, public infrastructure projects. We also see the increase of demand in compliance works in construction related matters as well as economic land concessions that are specifically designed for agro-industrial investments.

Business expansion drives the demand of financings, as seen through project finance, we acted for clients in a wide range of industries, including mining & energy, industrials, manufacturing and beverages. On top of conventional loans, the corporate bond market is emerging for both financial and non-financial institutions. Most of the large financing is still mainly provided by offshore financial institutions. Our Banking and Finance team is regularly engaged to provide advisory works relating to various innovative financial products. Payment service and financial technology are enquiries that we have received more frequently from international players. Consolidation among existing financial service providers remains a hot topic. 

Our firm recently launched the Health Care practice and our team was engaged to handle some landmark transactions including the assistance to the Ministry of Health of the Kingdom of Cambodia and the World Health Organization in drafting a new pharmaceutical legislation. In addition, market entry strategy in particular for new medical service (such as tele-medical) and compliances are works that we are engaged to assist.

Entry into force of some international treaties that Cambodia is a signatory, our Intellectual Property practice evolved to more complex and cross border types of assignments. 

Our Insurance practice differentiates from other firms in Cambodia by being the only firm to have a dedicated team with five dedicated fee earners for dealing with insurance related matters. We have assisted in most of the market entry works for international insurance companies in Cambodia. Thanks to our strong expertise in the field, we are engaged to advise significant deals relating to the acquisition in the insurance sectors. Our team regularly provides technical assistance to the Financial Industry General Department of Ministry of Economy and Finance through the drafting of new regulations such as the new sub-decree on insurance, the regulation on bancassurance and the regulation relating to tax on insurance. We have been recently recruited for three Southeast Asia Disaster Risk Insurance Facility (SEADRIF) projects in relation to disaster risk management such as (i) the legal feasibility study of the SEADRIF, (ii) Disaster Risk Financing Gap and Insurance Product Analysis for the SEADRIF Catastrophe Risk Pool, and (iii) Mainstreaming Disaster and Climate Risk Management into Investment Decisions. The project is funded and supervised by the World Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

Our Labour and Employment offers legal services related to with HR and employment policies, immigration issues, compliance work, advisory works, as well as labor due diligence. Our team is also highly experienced with dealing with collective labor disputes, mass layoffs, trade unions, shop stewards and strike. Recently, we were engaged to draft the Guideline on Labor Inspection for the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training.

Our Commercial Litigation Team is best known for our expertise and our deep knowledge and practice of commercial arbitration in the Kingdom of Cambodia, including the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral award in the Kingdom of Cambodia. In 2019, we have seen a recent growth of dispute resolution via commercial arbitration that was referred to us. One of our Partner’s, Youdy Bun is currently the President of the National Commercial Arbitration Centre in Cambodia (NCAC).

Our firm is unique in the market to have a dedicated New Technology & Telecommunication (NT&T) practice. We are deeply involved in the early stage of the adoption of the law on telecommunications. We assisted main players being both telecommunication operators and FinTech companies on some ground- breaking transactions such as the transaction involving the acquisition of the frequency spectrum. Regulatory compliance, market entry and data protection are the assignments that we handle on a regular basis.

The legal landscape dealing with petroleum business is significantly changed following the adoption of first Petroleum Law which was drafted by our firm. We are now actively working with the regulator to finalize two technical regulations to governing both upstream and downstream of petroleum business.

Our clients are very important to us, that’s why at Bun & Associates we strive to ensure their satisfaction in all matters.  This is evidenced through some of our client testimonials from Legal500, IFLR1000, and Chambers & Partners:

A satisfied client says:  "They have a deep knowledge of the legal context in Cambodia and a very good network," adding that the team "really understands our specifications and is able to come up with creative solutions."

A source highlights the firm's "understanding of clients' thirst for detail," reporting that "they meet demanding timetables, provide a good quality of work, and patiently answer the many questions raised."

“The team shows great capability in understanding legal/regulatory matters and analysing possible positioning strategies, flexibility in exploring different methods, practicality in suggesting approaches, as well as carrying out stakeholder management very well within the country. “